I rarely post but after checking here and doing extensive research myself, I have to ask if any of you have noticed AA totally "controlling" your bookings? Please let me explain.....this goes way beyond married segments and I will refer to "I" class (business class) international availability. Basically if you are building an itinerary (or if you have an existing itinerary), the availability changes depending on the flights you have chosen. It is the most frustrating thing I've ever seen. You will see a given flight available and select it, then go to book your return and the flight you want is not open, however it IS open if you haven't already selected your outbound flight. You will have to play around to see what I mean. AA is dictating what inventory is available based on what you already have or what you are trying to get. I'm thinking basically they don't want you to get the "I" fare both ways-just one way and have to upgrade the fare to "R" or "J" the other way.

Sorry about the length but has anyone else seen this mess?

I�m not completely following, but you might be better off pricing your flights on google flights and then having that link you to AA.com to ticket it. I�ve had good luck doing that.

If you are trying to construct an itin hop-by-hop using multi-city search in each direction of travel (or a one-way direction), it won't necessarily check married segment inventory availability until all segments have been selected in each direction. I don't know if AA flight search does that, but Google Flights searches does exactly that when using multi-city to construct an itin hop-by-hop (at least it does that with Delta flight searches) and you can see the fare change if married segment inventory differs from individual flight segment inventory after selecting all segments. If you are not using multi-city, then it doesn't really make any sense as one-way and roundtrip searches should already check married segment inventory availability in each direction.

I see this all the time on international stuff on many airlines where I cannot book directly, but a good OTA engine (kayak, google, expedia, priceline, etc.) can mix and match segments and fare types to get my goal fare. Some of the OTAs even show fare class detail.

Some specifics would be helpful